We’re breaking down the key highlights of each manifesto to help you make the best decision you can at the ballot box this July.
With TikTok, Instagram, 24 hour news, YouTube and more, there’s more information than ever at our disposal. However for many of us, that hasn’t made understanding politics any easier, especially during an election.
Naked Politics’ Manifesto Breakdown Series is here to help you decide which party- if any- you might consider voting for, by cutting through the petty politics and looking at what matters: the policies.
The Conservative party have had a pretty disastrous start to their election campaign, remaining on average 20 points behind the Labour party. The consensus the party built in 2019 under Boris Johnson was based on a mix of more leftwing sounding economic ideas (remember “levelling up”?) with the pledge to “get Brexit done” and much more socially conservative policies. After a rollercoaster few years which has seen two new Prime Ministers since Johnson resign, this policy approach seems to have fractured.
The Conservative party’s popularity amongst young people is also at a historic low, having been low for the last several elections. According to recent polling just 4% of 18-24 year olds and 10% of 25-49 year olds are planning to vote Conservative at the next election.
So what are The Conservative party offering you this election? Read below to find out more.
Climate change
They are titling their climate change approach as a “pragmatic approach to reaching net zero” by 2050 without in their words “unaffordable eco-zealotry”. The manifesto outlines they would continue to renew North Sea oil and gas licences, extend the windfall tax levied on oil and gas companies, scale up investment in nuclear power and invest £1.1 billion into the Green Industries.
Healthcare
They are promising 92,000 more nurses and 28,000 more doctors in the NHS by the end of 2029 and increasing the social care budget by £8.6 billion. 2.5 million more NHS dental appointments are also promised. They want to reduce the number of managers by 5,500, claiming it will help redistribute money back into front line services. Historically the majority of time under the Conservatives, if you account for inflation the budget for the NHS has rarely risen in “real terms”.
Mental health is increasingly important to younger people, and the Conservatives have cited various expansions of current mental health support, but without an exact financial figure behind it, such as “open[ing] early support hubs for those aged 11-25 in every local community by 2030” and “expand[ing] coverage of Mental Health Support Teams from 50% to 100% of schools and colleges in England by 2030.”
Housing
Their flagship policy for housing is the return of the “help to buy” scheme, providing first-time buyers with an equity loan of up to 20% towards the cost of a new home. This has been critiqued as a bad decision in the long term as it helps push up the price of housing meaning home ownership continues to get more expensive. They are also keeping the rate that you start paying stamp duty tax at £425,000.
The majority of younger people are not home owners and either live with their parents or are private renters. The Tories have kept their promise of banning “no fault evictions” where a landlord can evict a tenant without good reason, but that is a 2019 manifesto promise that they did not honour during the last government. They also want to “strengthen other grounds for landlords to evict private tenants guilty of anti-social behaviour.”
Employment, Wages and Tax
They have promised to abolish National Insurance (the tax that working people pay towards the NHS) for the self-employed. There’s also a swathe of tax cuts for pensioners and a promise not to raise corporation tax, but not much in comparison for younger working people.
They are increasing the living wage to £11.44 per hour and extending it to cover all workers aged over 21; young people under 21 will not benefit from this. They are also promising to cut employee National Insurance to 6% by April 2027.
Education
The main policy has been a commitment to compulsory National Service: either a year long placement in the military or 25 days a year volunteering in the community.
In schools, the Conservatives are promising new teachers in priority areas; key STEM and technical subjects will receive bonuses of up to £30,000 tax-free. They also want to mandate two hours of PE every week in primary and secondary schools, and ban mobile phones in schools, although it has been raised that many schools already have their own internal policies on limiting smartphone use during school hours.
On the university side, their only commitment is to closing university courses in England with the worst outcomes for their students. There are no policies seeking to address tuition fees, maintenance loans, or the reinstatement of nursing bursaries that were scrapped. They are also promising to create 100,000 more apprenticeships.
Likely in reference to the Labour party’s proposal to tax private schools, the Conservatives remain committed to “back[ing] them because we believe in the right of parents to choose the best education for their child.”
Migration
Despite continuous pledges since taking office in 2010 the Tories have overseen net migration at more than double that of 2015, the year in which the Tories formed a majority government.
They are upholding their commitment to the Rwanda Scheme, which involves sending asylum seekers to Rwanda instead of considering them for settlement in the UK- whether this is still possible given the Supreme Court ruled the policy was against the human rights convention is unclear. They’ve cited continuing to help those fleeing persecution in Hong Kong, Ukraine or Afghanistan, but no explicit mention of Palestinians fleeing violence from the Israeli state in Gaza and other impacted regions.
They remain committed to being against free movement, banning care workers and overseas students bringing their children and partners to the UK and want to “introduce a binding, legal cap on migration, set on work and family visas”.
Social Justice
We searched pretty hard, and failed to find many explicit policies tackling social injustice, aside from £54 million and £177 million promised to tackle antisemitism and islamophobia respectively.
On gender identity, they are doubling down on their opposition to education about trans issues in schools saying “parents have a right to see what their child is being taught in school and schools must share all materials, especially on sensitive matters like relationships and sex education” and reaffirming “clear age-limits on what children can be taught and guarantee the contested concept of gender identity is not taught to children.”
They are also supporting the expansion of policing “by giving officers new powers and tools to catch criminals, including technology like facial recognition and powers to seize knives and track down stolen property”. Like Labour, there is a focus on antisocial behaviour “fund[ing] every police force to roll out Hotspot Policing” to tackle this. They are also banning protests outside schools.
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